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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Festival 2017

Russell Foster

Matthew Sweet

Fiona McLean

Free Thinking: Festival 2017: Episode 1: Sleep - Freedom to Think

Sleep - Freedom to Think

Episode 1

Episode 1: Sleep - Freedom to Think

Festival 2017

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Festival 2017, Sleep - Freedom to Think

Russell Foster delivers the opening lecture of Radio 3's 2017 Free Thinking Festival.

In front of an audience at Sage Gateshead, Professor Russell Foster delivers the opening lecture of Radio 3's 2017 Free Thinking Festival, on the theme of 'the speed of life'.

"Take control of your sleep," says Professor Russell Foster CBE, leading neuroscientist and this year's opening lecturer on the festival theme of the Speed of Life. Sleeping consumes a third of our lifetimes, but Professor Foster believes our sleeping hours are still not properly appreciated. His research shows how our bodies, honed by three million years of evolution, follow a natural clock and not the man-made one in daily use. He believes that all life on the planet has developed a 24-hour timing system which humans now use to fine-tune our rhythms.

And yet Britain's sleep problems have never been more acute: three separate surveys over the past decade indicate insomnia has increased across the population - and it's becoming a source of public debate and private misery. 
Hosted by Radio 3 presenter Matthew Sweet in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.

Russell Foster is Head of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Senior Fellow at Brasenose College Oxford.

Producer: Fiona McLean.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series of events from the 2017 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'the speed of life'

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